What Metaphors And Analogies Can Do At Work.
Edition #126
The ContraMind Code
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
Not Everyone Has An Inner Voice Streaming Through Their Head.
In a recent article in Scientific American, Simon Makin writes about the research insights on inner voice and how its differences in individuals play a role in performing certain cognitive tasks.
Here are some interesting insights from the article:
People vary widely in the extent to which they experience inner speech, from an almost constant pattern to a virtual absence of self-talk.
People with weak inner voices did worse at psychological tasks that measure, say, verbal memory than those with strong inner voices!
Psychologists think we use inner speech to assist in various mental functions. It is key to self-regulation and executive functioning, like task-switching, memory and decision-making.
Understanding how inner speech develops has implications for education. It may impact the way kids learn to read and write, which will probably have a tremendous impact on their education.
Using brain imaging, for instance, to obtain more objective measures of inner speech differences will be an important avenue for future work.
Read the entire article here(behind a paywall.)
Making An Impact Through Authenticity And Curiosity | Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG).
Lenny’s podcast features fascinating conversations with world-class product leaders and growth experts, uncovering concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
In this conversation, Lenny talks to Ami Vora, who is the Chief Product Officer of Faire, which connects independent retailers and brands around the world.
Here are some thoughts shared during this conversation by Ami Vora which you can reflect on and think about:
Why it is important to be emotionally connected with your job.
“Your manager owns the context, you own the recommendation” - is a lovely quote from her for anybody who works in a product team.
Product reviews should be used to calibrate on principles rather than use these reviews for making decisions.
Her metaphors and analogies are vivid and bring forth pictures and images beautifully. Here is one: Remember what the new summit on a new hill would feel like. Therefore, decide if you are ready to go through the difficulty of getting to the top again after having scaled a summit earlier for a product. This is a brilliant analogy to think about a lot.
She explains the importance of narrative when working on a product because it brings people together on a common platform to think and ideate rather than get a set of tasks done. For example, the narrative for WhatsApp was ‘Face-to-Face’ communication, which helped define and build the product.
Customers don’t care about your strategy. If you have a great strategy but poor execution, you won’t live!
Learn things that would make you confident in your opinion. Get more comfortable having an opinion. Build new keys to unlock the doors of your mind as you grow in your career.
Learning how to interpret and respond to feedback.
De-entangle your metrics across teams, focusing on customer success through an integrated goal framework. Your single most important metric is long-term customer success.
As a leader, you will increasingly keep making more bad decisions as you try to solve suboptimal problems that others have not been able to solve.
You can also listen to the entire episode on:
I am Addicted To Being Disciplined And Am Not Perfect - Ravichandran Ashwin, Cricketer, Author(now!).
Ashwin, one of the leading cricketers from India, recently released his book, “I Have the Streets,” co-authored by Sidharth Monga, a leading cricket writer with ESPNcricinfo. The book chronicles Ashwin’s transition from gully cricket and his quest to improve constantly.
In an interview with The Hindu, Ashwin opens up on several topics that shaped his life and career. He spoke about his fondness for reading, why he’d love to go back to playing gully cricket on the streets of West Mambalam, his fondness for “mottamaadi” (terrace) cricket, what Tamil cinema has taught him, how the movie “Three Idiots” had a significant impact on him; why the thought of being a motivational figure doesn’t sit comfortably with him, and more.
Here are some thoughts Ashwin shares in this conversation that can trigger your thoughts and ideas:
How he would trade for his past rather than his current stardom. And how nostalgia inspires him and keeps him grounded.
Ashwin believes in his creative prowess and how it opened an alternative career.
The importance of ‘gully cricket’ and how it made him a fighter and compete in his career.
Ashwin describes how self-doubts still exist in his head after achieving so much success and how he has to overcome them.
He makes an important quote on parenting: ‘How his father could relinquish what he wanted versus what he needed'.’
“Education system or education, as time goes on, is not going to be bookish, it is not going to be marks, it is going to be the ability of the next generation kids to survive.”
How he has stopped planning, and he lives by the day as it comes.
99% of the people who end up in a profession are not entirely happy with it. And how he would like to unleash the creativity inside him, more than just cricket, that has made him what he is today.
“Finally, when you embrace things, things happen to you, and it unfolds.”
You can click on the above link and watch the conversation.
There is also another lovely Tamil conversation with Ashwin, which you can watch. It is raw, amazing in local Tamil language, and fun to watch. Watch it here.
What Metaphors And Analogies Can Do At Work.
Metaphors and analogies can be used intelligently and appropriately to help people learn, explain and understand complex ideas and concepts.
When you work with a diverse group of people and teams across different functions, you are constantly confronted with the challenge of making them easily understand and appreciate any concept or a new idea. People relate very easily to things that they have seen or experienced, and when you use these artefacts as metaphors or analogies, it rapidly accelerates their understanding. It also instils in them curiosity and interest to learn more about the complex concept or idea. They can also quickly relate to the impact and benefit that the idea or concept can bring to their work.
What is a metaphor? A metaphor implicitly compares two unrelated things. For example, when you say, ‘I am drowning in work,’ it creates an emotion and feeling of what happens when you are drowning( something that people have seen) and helps you feel and appreciate the concept or idea better to the other person.
What is an analogy? An analogy uses comparative imagery to lead to a logical conclusion. When you say, ‘Life is not a bed of roses’, it creates vivid imagery of how life is difficult, prone to have ups and downs and quickly helps them realise the lasting impact the concept or the idea can have.
A metaphor works very well when you have an abstract concept and want the team to solidify it by understanding the nuances thoroughly. When you are working on a large leadership or a digital transformation initiative, or a change management project, or a breakthrough innovative idea or a product, how do you make people see what you see? The use of analogies can help your team visualise what you are seeing, and that can quickly help bring your team on the same page. They start to see the possible dependencies and interrelated connections, and soon, they begin to conjure pictures in their own minds and imagine the end-state as to how they can contribute to the end-state that you envision.
On the other hand, metaphors help your team and any other stakeholders you work with feel and create an emotion for the concept or idea. Metaphors create an emotional connection with the idea, and people can feel and relate to the idea better. They give you a ‘ feel and sense’ of the character. People or your team start to understand the characteristics, personality, and unique traits of the character to align their thoughts with your ideas.
What metaphors and analogies do is give others an outline of a broad set of principles, build a common narrative among team members, help align thinking, and accomplish outcomes with a common purpose and understanding.
Metaphors and analogies can be new tools for enhancing people's emotional connection, thereby enhancing understanding and driving innovation and productivity.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
Product reviews must be used to calibrate principles rather than make decisions.
Your single most important metric in the long term is customer success.
As a parent, are you willing to relinquish your wants and goals ahead of your kids’ needs?
How metaphors and analogies are new tools for enhancing emotional connection, innovation and productivity.